Kodi 16, Jarvis, Gets 2nd Release Candidate, Nearing Release

The stable version of Kodi, which is a popular media player with a variety of plugins, has been continuing to improve stability. However, the developers have been looking ahead at the next steps in this application. This new version, Kodi 16, has been codenamed Jarvis and brings a number of enhancements to the platform.

Some of the major enhancements include a more abstract implementation of the skin system, making it easier to export and import them. In general it should also be easier to create new skins.

Audio digital signal processing (DSP) add-on integration, another highlight feature, will allow plugins for things like equalizers or fake surround sound. Allowing any developers the ability to add more functionality greatly improves the platform. The add-on manager has been modified to include toggling auto-updating and rollback support.

The PVR (personal video recorder) system should also receive some noticeable improvements, one of which includes series recordings. This should make binge watching easier when you can simply get every episode of a series as it airs.

There are a number of general improvements which won’t actually improve the experience on Android TV, such as improved multi-touch support and the user interface now will have depth for 3D viewers and virtual reality. On the Android TV support side, buttons can now have long press functionality for more actions. Additionally, the Android version is removing the libstagefright in favor of the new MediaCodec library.

When is this update going to be released? Jarvis just received its 2nd release candidate, a version of the app which is published shortly before a public release. Most bugs should be fixed and it should be almost ready for release. It fixes some of the crashes that were in the first release candidate and also continues to improve upon the changes in Jarvis.

The most stable version, 15.2, is available to download on Google Play, although you can sideload this release candidate by visiting Kodi’s downloads section.

Nick Felker is a student Electrical & Computer Engineering student at Rowan University (C/O 2017) and the student IEEE webmaster. When he's not studying, he is a software developer for the web and Android (Felker Tech). He has several open source projects on GitHub (http://github.com/fleker)
Devices: Moto G-2013 Moto G-2015, Moto 360, Google ADT-1, Nexus 7-2013 (x2), Lenovo Laptop, Custom Desktop.
Although he was an intern at Google, the content of this blog is entirely independent and his own thoughts.